What We Do In The Shadows
by Danny Barefoot
Summary: A collection of one-shots about shadowrunners, who you may recognise from some very different stories. One-shots are all set in the Shadowrun world, and deal with one derived Runner at a time. Updated sporadically.
1. On Broadway

_A/N: This story is in the inimitable style of Damon Runyon, and riffs on his stories 'Blood Pressure', 'Neat Strip', 'Broadway Financier', 'A Very Honourable Guy', and 'Madam Le Gimp', filmed as 'Lady for a Day'. For the incidents of the Shadowrun mission, and the only way I can knock off 5000 word plot bunnies through my hand slipping is to plug my characters into pre-made plots, I have to thank the Shadowrun Identity team very much for their UGC adaption of the tabletop 'Mercurial' campaign._

* * *

On a certain evening in the winter of 2050, a well-known resident of the Redmond Barrens, Old Sam by name, gets the idea of calling up some discreetly reliable operator who may be described as a shadowrunner, for such a job as he has that may require the services of same. And whose commlink does he dial but mine, just as I am setting my cyberdeck down in the old fleabag of a residence known as the doghouse, in that fine old neighbourhood of Puyallup, and heartily wishing I am back in the Big Apple with some chicken soup and cheesecake such as they serve at Mindy's.

But owing to a terrible heatwave throughout New York, and I am a very sensitive guy with regard to the weather, I am flitting to Puyallup, Seattle, and the apology for a safehouse known to one and all as the doghouse, with all due haste. In fact, such haste that the previous residents have not yet vacated, though this is perhaps because I stumble over their bodies left most inconsiderately in the entryway. Also, the unfragrant bodies of several Badges, who are evidently geeked in the process of doing the geeking, though I never meet an ungeeked Badge who smells so good. Furthermore, a couple of half-starved doggies making a meal of the said cadavers; indeed, if I am less quick with the old Fichetti equaliser, they will be making a meal of me, so you see the name of this joint is most appropriate. I wish it to be understood that I am normally fond of animals at all times, even after that hellhound almost parts my face from my skull on the Fuichi job two years previous, but it seems the ripperdoc neglects to give me rabies shots on my last visit.

I am acquainted with Old Sam from certain earlier visits to Seattle, and he is usually a swell Fix, even when only a little soused up, which is the best he gets. I do give him no little beef when he calls me, though I am usually a very friendly guy, but then there is so much unfriendliness around in Puyallup that it will drive a party to drink, and visibly most of its probationary citizens to novacoke and glue. Furthermore, it looks as if a kid troll shouting Moma could knock this whole berg down, poisoning him and the remainder of the metroplex with such a cloud of toxic fumes as would be raised withal. The glowing reviews Sam mentions for local property are most likely glowing away from the old radiation. In fact it is Sam who recommends to me the doghouse. Sam, however, now recommends to me shut-your-hole, and moreover, just-keep-the-old-stiff-upper-lip, stumpy. I know Old Sam has many troubles in his life himself, since his swell family cuts him off many years ago, and he keeps his upper lip stiffly fastened on the mouth of a bottle.

"Listen, Broadway, you lousy dwarf," Sam says to me like (For Broadway is my handle, on these streets, and I am somewhat of the dwarfish persuasion), "I just left Max Foley, the big music producer with Lowball Records, under the impression that some chill customers would be meeting him without fail at Club Underworld 93, tonight. Put a crew of Runners together and get there by two, or both our names will be mud in this town."

Now I am suffering somewhat from high blood pressure after taking care of the hounds, and in addition this is most high-handed behaviour of Sam indeed, and not at all suggestive that whatever this Foley wishes me and mine to carry out will be any milk run. Furthermore, Sam's name is the closest thing to mud in this town anyway. So I tell Sam that, having just touched down in the Emerald City, I do not know of any such desperate characters as may answer his purpose, which answer it is my habit to give out for the Badges in any case.

But Sam keeps grousing away, and it soon becomes clear this is a swell job indeed. In fact, Sam and myself will be laughed out of Touristville as rank suckers if we are so soft as not to hear more of it. The old headware memory, of which I have more than somewhat, and very useful for doping odds, counting cards or catching cheats it is too, begins cranking out the handles of likely chummers residing in Seattle, New York, Denver, Chicago, Kansas City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and even Quebec with whom I might mob up, if I can indeed collar them before two, and if they are not getting geeked or retiring some time previously.

It seems this Foley character will pay in advance for a team of Runners, so it is not required that I hire a team with my own nyuyen; a dicey proposition indeed, as I have not so much as will buy half a gnome. Furthermore, this Foley is permitting us to enter Club Underworld 93 without paying for same, and this is most remarkable to hear because the Trid news is raving like anything about the exceedingly famous crooner Maria Mercurial, and her concert this night at that very place. I acquire several tickets myself but sell them on at ten times face price to pay for moving expenses, also the gambling debts I pick up between Puyallup and the airport, for I really prefer Blues and Soul to such wild, rocky songs as Miss Mercurial sings. But many other parties of every age and metatype consider her songs the best thing since the orks were put out of sight underground, and if Foley is offering these tickets to Runners who will storm the private office of Lofwyr he will be mobbed with takers, at that.

-0-

Laying violent hands upon my hat and coat, after telling Sam that his proposition is a golden one, I proceed to the Shadows bar several alleys along, not trusting my person to the main streets for fear of the wide-open spaces, also troll gangers such as the Rusted Stilettos. The local watering hole is very deficient in lighting and seem to be additionally a strip joint, so many solid probationary citizens who have no tickets for Underworld 93, or perhaps do not care for music, are observing the blonde doll on the pole show off her very artistic shape. I consider her a neat strip, but nothing worth mentioning compared to Viola Rose from the Apple Barrel bar in Manhattan.

She is an elvish doll with enough gold in her hair to buy out Shiawase with the change from acquiring Saeder Krupp. Her eyes are as blue as no ocean left in the world, what with these oilspills we seem to be always having. Her smile will have the Trojans and the Greeks going for their nuclear buttons over her favours at once, and her shape is as close to perfect as anything in this bad old world can be close to perfect. Still, many dolls who are almost so looking work in her line for starvation wages, so it must be her gift of the gab that gets her noticed by a big simsense producer. Some ill-disposed persons claim that Viola is a little dumb to accept a contract for the kind of simsense this party wants her to make out in Calfree, but I may become a little dumb myself if I am offered so many nyuyen. Assuming it is for something other than removing my clothes in front of an audience, or whatever else, further assuming that any audience would part with their dough to see such a thing, for at the very least I imagine it becomes quite monotonous. Probably Viola Rose is finding it very monotonous too by this time, but if she ever wishes to stop making these simsense in Calfree, the mob partners of the guys who pay her all that nyuyen will take issue with this.

I cannot speak of cute elvish dolls without being reminded of Silk, who takes a Renraku executive for 3 million nyuyen and some. She then gives all of it but 'some' to the folk who are poisoned by this executive's scant regard for waste disposal laws in our fair US of C and A, which is assuredly worth being reminded of. The chances are that I will never see a looking doll in my life but I think of Silk, and maybe with a tear or so at that, though I hear she and the Lemon Drop Kid, since she gets him off the Jazz, are very happy in their retirement together.

I find I am also reminded of my old chummer Feet Samuels, who once informs me of his intention to clear off his gambling debts to the Yaks by selling his body. This strikes me as a very unlikely proposition, for the Yaks cannot swing a bat in Hell's Kitchen, N.Y. City, without knocking out a better-looking young guy than old Feet for their _Bunraku_ parlours. But it appears I get the wrong idea. A representative of Tamanous, the blackest-of-black market organleggers, has informed Feet that he is what is called a universal donor, and that if he is not using his bodily organs for anything very important, they will fetch a fine price indeed. Feet says it is alright if they look after his doll and their three kids when he is gone, for he is sufficiently cut up about these debts to blow his own brain out for nothing.

What Feet does not figure, being an ork from Brooklyn with no college education, is that his kids are more than likely to be universal donors as well, if he is. Tamanous takes them also and connects them to a machine for cloning blood and organs on a factory basis, next to poor Feet for all I know. His doll they simply rub out, and sell off her organs wholesale, which is lucky for her if half the stories about what Tamanous do to certain females are even half true–and considering all the many terrible things that happen to females every day, in every city of this world.

You may be asking, why did I not take issue with the biggest and most murderous of global organlegging syndicates over the turn they had served my chummer, or rather, acquaintance, and put in such a complaint as to make them sit up and take notice? To which I would not have much answer, since I am such a guy as does a great deal more listening than talking, except that any dealings I have with Tamanous are very bad for my blood pressure. I will say that whatever I do feel about all the unhappy stories I am acquainted with in my time makes as little difference to even this little town as a hill of beans, or maybe less. And when I am carrying about 400 MP of headware memory up there in the old cerebellum, filled with the stories of green Runners I see die too soon, or sad old has-beens who live too long…perhaps there is no room left over for me to feel so much, at that.

But to return to my original scene, and prevent a long tale from becoming longer than strictly necessary, I am soon speaking with a fair number of eager young parties as are taking their first steps into the shadows, such as may be found in any Shadows bar at any time. Such parties as these are always wishing to see swift action, though they may wish they had waited longer when they see it. I smile friendly-like, and let them gab on about their stories, for these are green Runners, and if green Runners dearly love one thing it is to tell their stories.

There is Siouxie Susie, an adept from Salish-Shidhe, who speaks softly of the warrior destiny in her blood and is a very sweet doll at that, with hair black as a moonless night. There is Gunner Jane, who is laid off from a security firm, and clearly possessed of a decent head on her shoulders, also she is a very good-looking troll indeed, though I personally like them not so big. Then there is Padre, who is so called because he is in fact a padre in the order of St Sylvester, and a wiz mage with a heal spell or a stunbolt also. Furthermore, there is a cute young decker who says she always has a thing for dwarves (what sort of thing I do not ask, but her capers cause no little consternation to the Padre), and also an elf who claims he is Tir royalty until he goes loopy from too much cyberware and starts geeking certain parties. In the cases of these last two, I stand them a drink and give a very prompt good evening.

Many chummers will tell you I am more of a hustler than a Runner. I will at all times trade any gear or intelligence that I can get such a thing as nyuyen for, especially if the intelligence might be related to gambling of any description, or fixes on same. My decking will never be spoken of in the same sentence as Dodger or FastJack, nor even in the same book, and my reputation in person is that I am practically harmless. However, I am able to assemble a team of Runners in less time than it takes to tell, without a mention of Maria Mercurial, among fresh chummers who I never meet before tonight. I remember their stories also, every detail of the way they tell them, as if they are all laughing here over their hopes and wishes this very moment. Perhaps for this purpose I am put into this world (Although an ork street sam present who extinguishes his cigarette–at the lit end–on the pole dancer's rear end, soon finds all his accounts wiped, and Lone Star holding a fresh warrant over him, in a most unaccountable way).

"Broadway. The broad way that leads to destruction?"

Padre makes this crack to me, smiling very white and straight. It seems he is saying that my name appears in this Bible of his, and of course he is telling me about it, for why else would a man of the cloth be about a strip joint with Runners and other villains?

"A broad way with much company is always good enough for myself, Padre. Furthermore, I will have less concern about destruction at the end than falling off half-way."

-0-

So myself, Souixie Susie, Gunner Jane and Padre take a bus to Underworld 93 on the edge of Puyallup. There is no little queue for the door, despite the cold and rain. In fact it stretches around the block more times than the Lambton Wyrm, also hissing and snapping at us no little when the doortroll lets us in direct. It is within that the most looking doll I see all evening asks us to shed any such thing as a weapon we have about us. I comply with same, although I assure her that there is less harm in me a two-year old baby, which I have mentioned already as my true reputation. Which goes for many others of the dwarfish persuasion as well, if they do not have beards. Gunner is as loathe to part with her Semopal auto-rifle and attached grenade tube as Susie is to entrust the tomahawk she carries at all times to the coatcheck, but we presently make our way inside the club proper.

The party has certainly been popping for some time when we arrive, furthermore the joint is jumping at about a mile per bound and with no sign of needing to rest its puppies whatever. The twenty-foot statue covered in neon that is always in the middle of Underworld 93 is blazing away, though what they are needing with such an item I can never figure. A tremendous crowd of guys and dolls are hollering at the stage so much that you would think Miss Mercurial could scarce make herself heard, but she most certainly is, at that.

With all four limbs of chrome, such as she always has on the Trids as well, and hair of such a light colour as to be almost silver too, she is hitting those notes like a Kung Fu master snapping bricks, and moving like no panther ever did unless it was made of mercury. Furthermore, she has the old whatjacallit that no sound system or vocal augmentation can even compete with, that flows out from the stage, hits each and every body present smack dab in the kisser, and sends them reaching into the sky for something that will make this bad old world shine with perfection. Even Padre looks like he is seeing a chrome-plated angel, and a couple of seconds before two is the time we shove along to meet this producer in a dressing room backstage.

This Max Foley is a short and chubby character with a fur coat, an expensive cigar, and very whitened teeth which he displays more than somewhat. He takes such a time to get down to brass tacks, particularly about what nyuyen he is prepared to pay us, and rattles on so much about the troubles of being obscenely rich and famous that I very quickly do not care for him whatever. In fact, a young doll with what few clothes she is wearing torn up some runs out his office crying very large tears just before we barge in, so at least three others of my crew are clearly wishing to give this guy a belting he will not recover from. I personally make sure to chisel all the dough out of this fink that I can.

"Alright, alright!" This Foley says like, "What is a little scratch among friends, am I right? Only you need to stick close to my girl for the next five days, making sure not even a hair on her head is mussed, for she runs out on her last manager five days before her contract expires, and I cannot legally engage a panzer battalion as her security detail before that time. I understand this dope Hernandez is taking his loss rather hard, and figure it for a sure thing he will do something drastic."

Well, I am about to ask who his girl is, it not always being a straight proposition with these society types, when Maria Mercurial herself walks into her own dressing room, saying how glad she is that Max has employed such capable looking shadowrunners to ensure her safety. I am surprised that the fiery and steel limbed amazon I see on stage is seeming no less sweet and shy than any kitten, in person, but mostly I am thrown for such a loop that you could thread me around a couple of metroplexes. The crew are much the same, though Gunner has such presence of mind as to snap to attention. However, before I can put some questions to Miss Mercurial with perhaps answers that will look very good in my memoirs, a number of parties enter the room without opening the door. In fact, the door is reduced to very small matchsticks by a very large troll, and it is apparent that the persons accompanying him with automatic weapons have some business with Miss Mercurial also.

It will be remembered that we give up all weapons but our fists in the entryway, so I perceive that the business these parties have is by no means legitimate, and also that the troll with a pocket-knife somewhat bigger than myself is probably never in the boy scouts. Also, Foley is taking a very great interest in the back side of a dresser, while Miss Mercurial is screaming bright blue murder at the top of her alpha-augmented lungs. A most surprising thing to be sure, for I hear stories that she was a Runner herself at some point. And several more parties are arriving through the busted door, offering moral support to their chummers who have us plumb in their gunsights, so it is clear that the situation becomes a most serious one.

Prompt action is evidently called for, and my action is to promptly have it away just as fast as I can go, which is not so fast at that. Though I do not neglect to throw a large lead poisoner, to wit an Ares Predator, in the direction of Gunner Jane. For I perhaps do not mention that the back entrance to the cloakroom at Underworld 93 has no such maglock as will give me any trouble. While my chummers are taking in the show, I remove such items as lucky keepsakes, loose credsticks, and such a weapon as can be better concealed than Gunner's assault rifle from this same cloakroom. As the un-legitimate looking parties open up the old blooie-blooie without stopping to introduce themselves, Gunner Jane is well able to offer them a riposte, bang-bang-bang, as she and my chummers dive for such cover as there is. One hostile character is very dead indeed, in considerably less time than it takes me to tell.

Padre's stunbolts and manabolts, furthermore, were by no means checked at the entrance, and he starts slinging the old hocus pocus at once. Then Siouxie Suie charges forth with a Hoka-Hey-Lakotas and weighs in with her fists. Parties that meet with an adept's fist very rarely have any response to same, for you understand that the no weapons policy of Underworld 93 is not unknown to me when I go looking for chummers. When Gunner empties the Ares Predator, being more than somewhat a troll, she does remarkable good work with her own fists, at that.

"All who live by the sword shall die by the sword," Quoth Padre, making a small prayer or whatnot over the very dead parties around the dressing room, "Still, a senseless, terrible waste."

"Life and death are one circle, holy man." Siouxie retorts, "And these men died bravely enough."

Gunner Jane spits on one of the dead, from where she is comforting Miss Mercurial, or whatnot, on the other side of the room, so you see she is very much a troll of parts. Max Foley has very little to say, and in fact looks not a well man, especially when I ask for double the fee we mention, but do not yet shake on, previous to this.

Such security as Underworld 93 can boast of is none too slow in arriving, though there is little to be done when they arrive. The doorman hollers for us to slot and run towards the armoured van he has round the back, and to depart with Miss Mercurial in said van. Though it must be understood that he is not donating his pride and joy to the cause because he cares especially for us, or for Max Foley at that, but for none other than Miss Maria Mercurial herself.

Several more armed and hostile parties are previously laying for us between the backstage door and this van, but it is a computer with a jackpoint, off to one side of the dressing room, that I am previously hoofing it for. The management of Underworld 93 displays no little foresight in installing automatic sentry guns, loaded with gel rounds, over both front and back entrances of their establishment. Though they do not spring for such IC as hinders me at all from taking control of said batteries, so that the parties laying for us out back are all flattened out and groaning, as we flatten them out some more while hot-footing it to the van.

I will say that Gunner Jane is a very fair driver, although she never looks any way but straight ahead. Furthermore, if she puts her foot down any harder she will be Fred-Flintstoning this van down the street, and something tells me the doorman may be very sorry if he never got fire insurance when the engine commences to smoke, or indeed that he ever lends us his ride. However, the Gunner takes every curve clean as the letter Q, and goes sufficiently fast that we are troubled no more until we park and exit the van. Upon which a Bulldog full of unfriendly Runners such as I never know by name pulls up, also a lot of armed gangers pour out of an alley behind us, and the situation is commencing to look somewhat uncertain once again.

"FRAGGERS!" And I am much surprised it is Maria Mercurial who pipes up with this, "I'M NOT TAKING DREK FROM SCUM LIKE YOU EVER AGAIN! GEEK THESE CREEPS!"

And she opens up with a Browning Max-Power she finds in the van, and nails a ganger through the brainbox, in fact kills him very dead, from a clear distance of twenty yards across the parking lot. So, I perceive she is a lady who is full of surprises at all times.

I learn from Max Foley some time later, after we have taken out the trash and he has finished further spoiling our van by means of filling his pants, that it is many years of addiction to BTL chips which splits poor Maria's noggin into three-or-four partitions. It is a matter of chance whether she acts the part of an Amazon, a businesswoman, or the harmless little girl she was before some very bad characters got hold of her.

I can only say that she is nothing to me but the singer, Miss Maria Mercurial, and a fair source of income for me also. I mean at that time, and also afterward, to do whatever will keep her from harm which I can be reasonably expected to do. Which turns out in the fullness of time to be a very great deal more than I expect myself, for I am already commencing to perceive that Max has some very serious reason for employing us as bodyguards. Indeed, I already suspect that his story of a mere contract dispute with this Hernandez, whom he says Maria takes a walk on because she suddenly discovers that he is dealing BTLs on the side, is strictly the old phonus balonus and not on the level at all.

-0-

Well there is a very great more I could tell involving Maria Mercurial, some very bad characters in the employ of Aztechnology, and also a certain dragon–I must make a statement here that making a deal with a dragon seems to me a fair slight better situation than being obliged to chuck slugs at one, as in a moment of madness I do. But it is a most famous story indeed, and you may read all there is to know about it on Shadowlands that you do not read in the papers. And you will be reading nothing there about Siouxie Susie, or Padre, or Gunner Jane, or Broadway, because it is Miss Maria Mercurial's story, and by no means my own in any way.

There is a line of simsense chips called Lady for a Day, whereby some broken-down old babushka, who had nothing but misery in all her years before she slots this chip, can make believe she is Maria Mercurial. Young and beautiful, silver-strong and perfect, loved by so many millions of people as would shut off the Amazon or Niagara if you dumped them all in the middle of it. It is by no means a BTL, so it is perfectly safe, and I wish to say that the tears of happiness all over this old dame's face, as she comes out from under, seem as real to me as any happiness ever does in this world. But when this world has so much more misery than happiness as it does, this may not be so very real at that. My point is that there is no story so big as this story of Maria Mercurial that the remainder of my life has any part in, but that the remainder of the whole of my life is not without its little enjoyments.

What I am is a character without a story, always just around and about. Stuffed with other parties' stories to the top of his headware and holding onto them like his only treasure. I spend my working days floating about the Matrix, clipping suckers, doping the online gambling parlours and generally doing the best I can. The Matrix is a good honest lie, and a place of very great interest. Digital nyuyen have no solid existence, especially when they blow on the next horserace, but the things you can buy with nyuyen, or can't without it, are solid enough for the time being.

I am often around Seattle these days, especially at the Seamstress' Union, a very fine joint indeed. Seattle seems almost more like the real New York City than New York City these days, what with all the passcards and policechecks that are investing the latter place. Though there is still room, as there always is, for competent parties to slip under all that heat and make it to Mindy's Diner, where they will always be serving cheesecake and strudel between Forty-Ninth Street and Fifty.

It is a spoonful of warm chicken soup now that is sliding on down past my Adam's apple, while the dumplings are simply plumb, and a melancholy song drifts over the joint. I savour the taste of this warm chicken soup more than somewhat, for it is more real than many other things in this world. Perhaps more real than me, for I am no guy that has ever warmed the heart of any party that ever existed, for as long as I am always around and about. Maybe the soup is more real than Siouxie Susie, Gunner Jane, the Padre, Silk, Joe the Joker and many other characters I never tell you about before, but it will be the Seventh World before long if I tell you about any of them.

That is all there is to tell except–what am I doing, talking as if Al Capone still rules Chicago, not the Bug Spirits, and as if the past tense in any form is a thing for rank suckers?

Perhaps a bad personafix got stuck in my chipslot. Perhaps a Free Spirit has been riding me since forever, that first touched down between the wars on Broadway. Or maybe I am a character in other people's stories, and I can be anything I like at any time, so long as it's me.

Why not roll a dice on it? Even in a bad old world such as this, some incredible things may happen when you roll the dice.


	2. Hop Frog and Trippetta pt1

A/N: This is Shadowrun adaption of Edgar Allan Poe's, Hop Frog; reading the original very short story on Wikipedia would be recommended, especially since it's a very effective one. Cordelia Gallo's character is somewhat derived from the anime 'Gosick', where she is the lost mother of the heroine Victorique, after being abducted and raped by the Marquis Albert de Blois.

* * *

_Your excellency,_

_A capital notion occurred to me during your last Paris excursion, at the very moment your excellency flung wine in the face of that dwarfish dancer__– do you recall the risible peccadillo?__ At that very moment, I say, although I cannot precisely say _why_ at that very _particular_ moment, I was possessed by an idea for a most amusing diversion, which I had intended to, and will now with all expedient clarity and conciseness, unveil immediately in advance of tonight's masquerade ball at Comtesse Prospera's._

_With submission, my notion is that your excellency, myself and six other suitable companions should burst in upon the party under the disguise of Apache street gangers. After plundering the ladies and gentlemen of their valuables, with threats of violence and ravishment, we might presently invite them to applaud a harmless and well contrived pleasantry. The sensation produced in society by such a bold and original jest must needs be incomparable. An apparent band of wild, rapacious street-savages and the_ _nobility of France,_ _resplendently arrayed …the contrast between them, as I imagine it, shall be simply inimitable. I have taken the liberty of arranging matters in advance with the Comtesse's staff, and necessary accoutrements have been entirely prepared._

_Your obt. Servant in every respect,_

_Hubert_

His excellency Comte Albert de Blois, son to the current Marquis, dismissed the netmail from his cutting-edge MCT commscreen with a smile. It never failed to amuse him that his valet wrote like a pompous windbag, and yet remained so silent and obedient in person. The young Comte' pride was in a keen appreciation of nature's foibles–with little effort, he could still picture the ridiculously impotent defiance in that stump-leg trollop's dripping face.

His passion was for novelties of amusement–hence, he was very soon shooting over to Comtesse Prospera's clifftop mansion, above the dark and star-shining sea, in his newest Rolls-Royce Phaeton. Special Agent Rafe Slade had driven a _silver_ Rolls in this year's trideo blockbuster, and also bedded the trid's 'Slade girl' in the back of a Hotspur offroad racer; Albert had naturally acquired both cars. He glanced sharply in the rearview mirror at his own sleek, pale visage. His cropped pale-gold coiffure–richer and finer than any elf-hair prosthetic wig, such as certain elderly baronesses acquired from Marseille gutter-fey. Bad form. It was the duty of _la crème de la crème_ to both act and appear accordingly.

Nice the Beautiful glittered with a passionate light beneath him. While twin plagues of goblinisation and globalisation ravaged France with multicultural monstrosity, the nobility's independent city stood unassailable and pure. Jap and Yankee megacorps might seize the world with their _tradesman's_ money, but the elite of the greatest nation in human history–with their inherited wealth, a million unseen connections, and that hidden power never to be named–would maintain their natural rights and rule. The casinos and bordellos of Nice, her yacht clubs and masquerades, stretched out an unending dream of glorious evenings. Infinite riches in a little room, as _The Jew of Malta_ put it, except that there were no Jews or subhumans permitted within this precious fortress.

An hour before midnight. The ball at Comtesse Prospero's was, as indubitably as inevitably, sensational. Past white walls, dark hedges perfectly coiffed, and liveried guards with FAL HAR rifles at rest, half-a-hundred windows displayed a dozen brilliant chandeliers. Wine in crystal decanters, novacoke on porcelain dishes. Walls red as blood, upholstery pink as flesh, ornament cramming every inch of celling with an overwhelming _horror vacui_. Packed close within as the very gold in their vaults, the refined nobility of Europe laughed and mingled. Fanned and perspired, snubbed, slandered and grovelled. Drank and flirted, lusted and loathed–played with cities or lives for nothing but pure pursuit of amusement.

The lights would dim thirty minutes before midnight; that would be the moment for enacting Hubert's scheme. Quite upstaging the promised show of dancing magical fire that was already drawing every guest toward the grand salon, breathless with anticipation as with the heat. Paris had led every French city in the raging current fashion for magical displays and accessories; the noble masqueraders paraded the _vizards_ of dragons, nature spirits or pagan goddesses. Shimmering starry robes, gossamer dresses and the finest cosmetics of laboratory and herb-garden adorned their bodies to the fingertips. Glowing charms of unnatural health sustained ardent flesh and chattering voices. It fell to nobility to make a fairyland on Earth–so long as dwarves laboured in filthy garages, elvish prostitutes slotted BTLs in alleys, and street mages sold prophylactic charms on every corner. Down in those shockingly coarse Parisian slums, where Albert de Blois went slumming whenever endless perfection grew tedious.

Though he was still hidden off to one side, the grating laugh of the Comtesse assailed Albert's ears. She had snubbed him at Prince de la Ribaudere's gala last year–_nemo me impune lacessit_. Furthermore, it took effort and ingenuity to preserve Nice's delicate endless perfection with novelty–more than the amusing but familiar entertainments that Comtesse Prospera had already provided for her distinguished guests.

The bodies of several SINless trogs delivered from Marseille had already been removed from the gardens. For a trifling victor's purse, the brutes had gouged and beaten each other to death in a pit; surrounded by the civilised laughter and applause of their betters. Nothing much, compared to the Duc de Berry's private soirees where naked elf women wrestled each other to death in a mudbath–but there was also a livefeed from _Le Chateau_ in one lounge. The castle just within Nice's independent borders, where especially desperate subhumans mutilated themselves and each other; all for nyuyen to prolong the miserable lives of their sickly spawn.

In the entrance hall, Lord Wolfram's set had wound down their favourite sport of dwarf tossing. Those dwarves who'd been laughably surprised to find themselves hurled over the balustrades of the second-floor landing would be fairly compensated for their injuries. But the _Piece de Resistance_ had been_ La_ _Tour de France_–doping had been compulsory in the real thing since the '30s, but the Nice version went a few steps further. A dozen metahumans strapped to exercise bikes and filled with a lethal cocktail of amphetamines. The last one whose heart gave out received a Docwagon revival along with his prize of nyuyen. No restraint or coercion were necessary–no brainwashing, cybernetic or magical. Like the _gigolettes_ of every age and race who filled the exclusive bordellos of Nice, SINless subhumans would do anything they were told for a few hundred-thousands of nyuyen.

Albert's father the Marquis–and his Human Nation _confrères_–had often told the young heir that he must put trivial amusement aside one day, and seriously use his high position for the betterment of humanity. Like the Duc de Berry's cousin in the CSA, who employed night riders to quietly hunt and kill as many subhumans as possible, selling the troll horns in Hong Kong as aphrodisiacs–it all sounded as tedious to Albert de Blois as _Le Chateau_ and _La Tour de France_ had at length become. Bold and original novelty was required; endless delight for the apex of humanity. Albert de Blois considered–as Hubert the valet silently passed him a sailor's jacket, a crimson sash, an Apache pistol and the latex mask of a black-faced ork–that it was the highest and worthiest pursuit in history that he went to now.

-0-

The oldest and most feared street gang of Paris, with roots as far back as the 1900s, the Apaches had not been named for any Amindian connection, but for a custom of ambushing their enemies _en mass_ and carving them up with bayonets attached to their handguns. The howling and whooping band of bright-sashed desperadoes which burst into the darkened salon at a quarter to midnight certainly had the desired effect of creating a wild sensation. Many guests too befuddled to recall the distance between Paris and Nice were filled with alarm and terror–these young toughs seizing fainting ladies by their hair and holding daggers to fluttering bosoms, snarls bright as fangs in their black faces, seemed certainly to be vicious thugs in every respect.

Priceless costumes and frailer nobility were swiftly crushed to the floor in the darkness, on every side, as a dozen elegant voices bawled for the guards. Of course, the guards were in on the joke–indoctrinated to obey any noble without question in the cause of entertainment–and Hubert had also had the foresight to confirm that weapons would be excluded from the ball itself. Albert considered that his loyal servant had excelled himself–outfitting him and his followers with the blackened faces of such trogs, blacks, Arabs and mongrels as swelled the criminal classes of Paris had been the fruit of subtle and astute observation.

The six companions howled again and waved their empty pistols–minor nobles and hangers-on, Albert regarded them as nothing but mindless stage props. Spinning a string of pearls on his bayonet with a grin, he squeezed Hubert's thin shoulder and whispered congratulations in his brown-stained ear.

"Not at all, milord. This triumph was entirely of your own making."

"Come, no false modesty! The original idea was your own, entirely–"

"–it was yours, milord. You communicated your orders to me this morning by netmail."

Albert de Blois was still trying to determine what this meant, when blue light filled the giant windows and the wail of sirens filled his ears. The roar of APCs, charging through the open gates of Comtesse Prospera's mansion. Armed shadows already pouring out–the municipal police! The absurd, plebeian _Flics_!

Albert burst out laughing. Several nobles also laughed, having realised this was all a joke and now assuming that the police were merely the punchline (As the stock-still mansion guards had indeed been informed, though not, in fact, by Albert or Hubert). An elderly Vicomte, less easily amused–also a former general and Eurowars veteran–instead leapt on the apparent chief of the Apaches, struggling for his weapon. Albert de Blois struck the old fire-eater down with his spiked pistol-butt, without a thought. A moment before the police sniper's bullet penetrated the black latex of both his snarling ork mask and his nobly formed skull.

There were screams and hysterics; the surviving Apaches fell to the bloodied floor. The blue-armoured police who burst in only shot Hubert and two others dead, before Comtesse Prospera forced her way forward and screamed something about a _very_ serious talk with their commander at next week's baccarat evening. The police captain, flanked by two winking drones, was trying to explain that they had received an emergency call–_shadowrunners_ had supposedly taken the party hostage, cutting off all communication with the mansion a moment later–when security shutters squealed down over every window, and every maglock clicked shut.

_That_ was when the promised display of dancing magical fireballs appeared near the ceiling of the grand salon. _Across_ the ceiling, in fact–the whole ceiling and portions of the walls were burning red, white and blue within seconds. The million-nyuyen sprinkler system did not disgorge a drop, inevitably–while the guards and police still outside were now too busy firing on each other to offer the slightest assistance.

Now it was mad-eyed, bestial pandemonium which began to reign. Stately, white-bearded men crushed gorgeously dressed young debutantes under their Milan-made shoes, scrambling from the fire to a safety that was nowhere. Noble ladies trampled police or Apaches under stiletto heels, and the police who had winked at the noblity's 'entertainments' for years punched them back. One police drone hovered in place to record the whole scene, another drone slipped through a vent to download all recordings and security footage of metahuman torture, at an unseen rigger-decker-terrorist's behest. ANARCHY, terror and death–choking on the fumes of burning velvet, screaming in the flames, broken and dying under the noble throng–held illimitable dominion over all.

-0-

_"So thoroughly astonished was the whole company… by just such a low, harsh, grating sound, as had before attracted the attention of the king and his councillors when the former threw the wine in the face of Trippetta (the dancer)…It came from the fang-like teeth of the dwarf, who ground them and gnashed them as he foamed at the mouth, and glared, with an expression of maniacal rage, into the upturned countenances of the king and his seven companions._

_"Ah, ha!" said at length the infuriated jester. "Ah, ha! I begin to see who these people are now!" Here, pretending to scrutinize the king more closely, he held the flambeau to the flaxen _(orangutan costume) _which enveloped him, and which instantly burst into a sheet of vivid flame. In less than half a minute the whole eight ourang-outangs were blazing fiercely, amid the shrieks of the multitude..._

_"…I now see distinctly," (The dwarf pronounced), "What manner of people these maskers are. They are a great king and his seven privy-councillors–a king who does not scruple to strike a defenceless girl and his seven councillors who abet him in the outrage. As for myself, I am simply Hop-Frog, the jester–and this is my last jest."_

_…It is supposed that Trippetta, stationed on the roof of the saloon, had been the accomplice of her friend in his fiery revenge, and that, together, they effected their escape to their own country: for neither was seen again._

_–_Hop Frog_, Edgar Allan Poe_

-0-

Less than a week after _Le Bal des Ardents_–the Ball of the Burning Men–in a particularly stygian corner of the Paris catacombs, a young dwarf dancer was waiting to meet with another very strange dwarf, before the two of them fled the country. The catacombs proper were so packed with strobe-lit gothic nightclubs, pitfighters, S&M dungeons–and thrill-seekers so ardent as be unsated by all three–that even the ghouls and vampires had moved out to suburban sewers for some peace. Plenty of bold, exciting Shadow work was worked out under the din of Toxic House, but this little wine-shelf behind a collapsed staircase, operated by a silent, sallow gnome, was a place for vanishing in the Shadows within the Shadows.

Cordelia Gallo was the name of the little dancer into whose face the late Albert de Blois had thrown wine–Trippetta was the stripper name she'd used for the last three years, since she'd been sixteen. It was hard to tell a dwarf's age, especially when appearance was all that mattered in the nightclubs–if some of the 'admirers' who drooled while she twirled round a pole would've been going after real children otherwise, wasn't it good that they weren't? Even 'normal' men typically liked their women small, sweet and manageable. Her charms, in short, were so renowned through the Parisian _demi-monde_ that Human Nation associates of Nice's elite would have laid hands on her within twenty-four hours of examining Albert's commlink–had her protector not had the foresight to remotely brick every device that had received his mendacious messages of vengeance.

Warily smoothing her skirt and shawl, then adjusting the tilt of her little black hat, Cordelia emptied her shotglass and tapped for another. Her body was waif-thin for a dwarf, more like a four-foot elf or an immortal golden dreamchild–her hair was gold down to her feet, when she let it loose. Her snow-white cheeks were full and rich as any cherub's–the scars men had given her weren't where in showed. Except in limpid green eyes, ancient and broken as a woman who had first prayed for death when she'd been homeless and twelve.

She'd called herself _Loup Gris_, in the old Belleville urchin street gang; it hadn't suited her, which was why she'd chosen it. The streets hadn't suited her, but she presumably hadn't suited the parents from some nameless Alpine village who'd given her up. Or the grey provincial orphanage that held her, before she'd slipped free and flown for the Sprawl of Lights like a moth.

Little Cordelia had done a great deal to stay alive in the seven years since then–dangerous, degrading, unlawful or all three. She would have survived, even if she hadn't been that rarest of Awakened, a Mystic Adept. It mattered surprisingly little; before _Le Bal des Ardents_, she hadn't cast a spell or drawn on her Ki in two years. You needed nyuyen to survive, nyuyen to learn magic–all the talent in the world was a frost-dead rose without it. Nothing mattered about your talents, your dreams or your life in the slightest–if you met and trusted a man like Alan Bain.

On the streets, she'd been scared of the traffickers; the Apaches who would box her into an alley and take turns to rape her. She'd never thought she'd be beaten and raped by the man she'd lived with for six months and might've been a little bit in love with. The man who'd taken her in, taught her magic. The man she'd held gently, with love in her heart, as he moaned about _his_ broken dreams into his glass of synthol. Who'd told her three months later to get rid of the baby, or he'd get rid of it for her.

Mother, Mystic Adept, it didn't matter what she was; she was broken and weak, a woman who'd rather let the first man she'd trusted abuse her than kill him. Alan was a two-bit street mage, but he had dangerous friends. Even when it was right to kill, to burn the world down, you had to live with the consequences, and she hadn't. The knife had fallen from her hands. He'd sneered and called her a stupid slot. He'd made her strip, instead of becoming a better mage than he'd ever be, and taken the money–that hadn't been as bad as the rest. The violence of the street had made her forget it, but she'd actually loved dancing more than anything, since she could walk. Even teenage strippers could be happy–you just had to accept things the way they were. Alan had told her that, every night.

The fire at Comtesse Prospera's mansion, the world burning down, was blazing over her commscreen now. As well as the heavily censored news vids, she'd watched the full unredacted drone footage that was raging from shadownode to shadownode, across the global Matrix. Nobles and their lackies burning alive, trampling each other to save themselves–and a full account of all the nobles' sadistic entertainments was right beside it, even as the nobility, the government and the megacorps denounced the _libel_ in unison as complete fabrication. The surviving Nice-based nobility had evidently shelled out a truckload of favours to the less fossilised and racist–far more politically-minded and dangerous–nobles of Paris. SINless metas in Marseilles would probably be left to starve unmolested for a few years, but no one in power had any interest in real change. There was even an outpouring of sympathy for the tragic young nobles, a rallying against terrorist outrages–the mildly burn-scarred Comtess Prospera would be holding a modest charity gala within months.

Had it been worth it? Cordelia watched the silent screams on her little comscreen–the beautiful burning people, screaming, what had they ever done to deserve this? Then she turned at the sound of a laugh. Faint but intense; penetrating as a thermic lance. Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha.

"Edgard. _Mon cherie._ I'm glad you're safe."

"Thank you–but our safety, and indeed our very selves, are in our _noms d' guerre_ now, my very dear _Trippetta_. Please call me _Hop Frog_."

-0-

Hop Frog the dwarf was two years older than Tripetta and ugly in the face as she was gorgeous; as much (apparent) mirth gleamed from the creases round his pinhole eyes as sorrow filled hers. He'd entered the wine-shelf with the stumbling, _hopping_, gait imposed by his uncorrected club foot. A customised Fuchi cyberdeck holstered on his back, and a stoop denoting the days and nights he'd poured through it into the digital sea.

Red hair cropped to his lumpy scalp, the blood-serious decker's manner of intense focus on something just behind your ear. A set of, indeed, very large and unaesthetic teeth, that formed the pure and worshipful grin of triumph with which he faced his Trippetta. He'd hardly dared speak a word to her through their years at the orphanage, though he'd half-bitten one ear off a boy who'd groped her little chest without asking. She smiled composedly back.

Poe's original Hop Frog–as Edgard Hilsenrath would have informed anyone remarking on the resemblance–had been a slave kidnapped from a 'barbarous' nameless country, not a milk-pale Alsatian dwarf who'd customised a Sony CTY deck from a junkyard in his teens. Attention to detail had been as essential to the terroristic jest he had planned as the magical wrench Cordelia had thrown into the fire display–or the healing and adept powers that had enabled her to be dwarf-tossed without injury and slip away long before Albert and his 'Apaches' had arrived. Essential, but not the _essence_ of his vengeful scheme–Hop Frog would have insisted–so much as the love within him that could scarcely be imagined, and his hatred that could barely be conceived.

"The truth, my dear Trippetta, of metahuman beings and all that binds them, shall always be the study of my life. The truth must be known and the truth must be shown, in this milieu of mendacity when the very air we breathe is corp-certified falsehood…though it was through my lies that you could show your truth at last, more precious than the rubies of a thousand mountain. You were brave, you are courage. You broke free–you are become freedom! It is an excruciating pain to me that the Shadows must hide your truth from the world's sight, hide your courage and bububu…_all_ of your wonderful qualities, but it is necessity. Nonetheless, the truth shall be made known to the people, regarding those leech-demons in silks who call themselves _noble_, ordained masters of the world! Oh, yes. I now see _distinctly_…what manner of people…these maskers are! _Vive l'anarchie!_"

Hop Frog glanced merrily at the vid-clip of fire and torment still playing on Cordelia's commlink; bit his own knuckles to muffle laughter. His low grating voice never varied in tone, but his savouring, ravenous delight over every word was palpable, and his eyes held no more pity than for onscreen demons in a netgame.

"You know, we could have held onto the recordings, and everything the nobles were up to. It would have ensured own safety."

"Impossible. A blow had to be struck against all their outrages; the truth _must_ be free."

There was no anger, but there was no argument. The white-hot, teeth gnashing rage that had glared but once upon Albert de Blois, and consumed him, frightened Cordelia by its mere existence. But once a fool with men, always a fool–and she had known worse men than a passionate genius who would slaughter the crowned heads of Europe for her honour.

Whether she slightly trembled from fear, excitement, or something else, before the dwarf who had transfigured her own life incredibly…Cordelia lowered her eyes as she smiled and dipped him a tiny curtsey.

-0-

Edgard had worked for a time at a small custom software company, before the shadows–he had never expected such a thing, but the manager had been willing to engage a fellow dwarf and manifest computer wizard, on a SINless off-the-books basis. Even before they'd been bought out by Saeder-Krupp, and he'd learnt how many ways a good decker could make nyuyen in the shadows, his real work had been at the University of Berlin. Enrolling online on every course he could spoof qualifications for; Political Philosophy, Computer Sciences, Literature. The heart and brains of the Flux State didn't care about SINs; governmental firewalls cut off every state in Europe from them, but Edgard hadn't slept until he'd broken through.

After three years he had quietly concluded that every nation, government and corporation was a sick joke. Metahumanity was the punchline, and anarchy was the answer. The beasts and schemers had to burn like Notre Dame, or the SINless and the metas would never be free–the golden dancer who soothed his burning dreams would never be safe.

He'd known what answer Berlin would give him. He'd known as soon as he could read faces that he was a freak, and the only freedom worth the name was freedom for freaks and geeks, the dissident and despised. Berlin had forged belief into conviction; a solitary, abandoned, half-made dwarf-child into a man. Born for love and revolution–Dazai. The passion of destruction that is creation–Bakunin and Greene! The power to begin the world again–Thomas Paine! For the study of revenge, immortal hate– the courage never to submit or yield–AND WHAT IS ELSE, NOT TO BE OVERCOME? Satan of John Milton!

Mad I am not…but very surely, I do dream. Edgar Allan Poe, immortal as the night.

Bakunin and Rosa Luxemburg had taught him what he must do, but Poe, Shelley and Shakespeare–the shadowed dreams that had filled up his silent, private node in the matrix–they had taught him what he _was_. A crippled dwarf, his twisted body the honest pattern of his shadowed mind, despised in a world of corrupted beauty and noble hate. Such a world and his own being had called him, to _become_ Hop Frog.

-0-

"Have you been eating properly, _mon ami, _while evading every _Flic_ in France?"

"The winds of change are my true food. The blood of capitalists and their running-dogs, my true drink–"

"–I'll take that as a no. Remember, fugitives need more energy than it takes to sit at a cyberdeck. It is a detail, but an essential one, and what we do and leave undone can truthfully never be altered."

"I will remember it. It _is_ my regret, though not my greatest regret, dear Trippetta–" Hop Frog sat down beside her "–that I did not undertake this action solely for your sake. Not for pure revenge upon that smooth, vile noble who abused you without scruple or thought…! Nothing I have done has been without _thought_. The wine that stuck and stained you was a manifest microcosm of the poison that rulers have spread across seas and skies. The shameful blows they pour upon metahumans, women and men, only for their sport…the injustice of power that screams for justice and fire–!"

"Hop Frog and Trippetta had been enslaved for years. They were also avenging more than a glass of wine."

Cordelia put her gloved hand on Edgard's hand and felt him breathe out–she'd quickly learnt how best to calm him down. She ordered a glass of water for him, wine for her, and touched their glasses.

"You know," Her smile was a slim ray of light, "There's perhaps only one act that two people should do entirely for each other…?"

"Please, don't mock me." Hop Frog flinched back from his Trippetta, face contorted, "I had nothing of the sort in mind…my only desire is be your protector, to avenge injustice, my only possible desire…love forsook me in my mother's womb. You don't desire me."

"There are other reasons for a woman to make love to a man." Cordelia responded, "Mostly bad ones, but I doubt I will ever make love for love or pleasure again. Free choice is all that is left to me, and only because of you. Perhaps I wish to prove that you are made of flesh, not circuits and ink. You speak of the soul's truth, Hop Frog, but how can your own truth be only fiction?"

"Anarchists have always been called fantasists. They say metahumans cannot act apart from profit and greed–the dragons and smaller monsters who glory in the world's suffering–and their lies recraft their toiling slaves in their own monstrous image. The only revolution is a revolution of the _mind_, yet there will be fire and blood…before this corrupt, vile world of gold is made a world of iron and silicon; of will and dreams. Dreams are stronger than steel. When Don Quixote rode out as a knight errant, to bring a vile world purity and justice, for the sake of his lady, Dulcinea–was he not living out the true desire of his spirit, against all odds?"

"True enough, but that knight who lived his life from books of knighthood was himself a character in a story. His Dulcinea was a peasant girl he imagined into a lady–she didn't exist even within the book."

"Did you read it, then?"

"Too busy surviving, but even strippers can crib a summary off the net."

"Ah, Dulcinea, do not determine the course of your life by what you read on the net!" Both dwarves grinned at the shameless irony, "Do not persist in thinking yourself a slave. The life you had, you will never return to. Tomorrow is yours to craft by your will–freedom was the most precious gift for you that I could imagine."

Cordelia had never told Edgard about Alan; the dwarf who'd had nobles burned to death over flung wine might have done something rather drastic about three years of abuse and heartbreak. His rage did not corrode his cunning any more than the nuclear battery of some terrible machine–she'd never imagined that she could imagine all he might do. But he had awakened her curiosity, sympathy and even laughter; the courteous, solemn little cripple who she'd talked with all night after her shift finished, sometimes, in the alleys behind the strip joint soaked with more chipheads' tears than raindrops. The other girls had told her she ought to charge that little toad by the minute. Alain had shaken and slapped her like a baby when she'd got home with his nyuyen–when he hadn't been snoring drunk–but she'd reckoned it cheap at the price.

Her Hop Frog had been a piece of a fairytale, her frog prince–an old, true tale, filled with shadows, passion and blood. No shadowrunner-saves-the-world trideo blockbuster could show you what the Shadows really held, which was absolutely everything. In the Shadows that bounded her numbing-narrow, still-pain-filled world; a teenaged dwarf stripper who couldn't die however hard her man hit her or change anything else. Hop Frog _was_ change, something different, and she had clung to his hand. Listened to his words and helped him to kill a lot of people; to strike at some of the most vicious and powerful persons in Europe, who would hunt them until their deaths. But how ridiculous it now seemed, that she'd ever feared a talentless drunk of a street mage and a few Belleville thugs!

Cordelia glanced down at her commlink, set the clip running again. Anarchy and fire–that was what she'd bought, what she'd done. Terror, her new world–they'd been no fear in her old life, when nothing would ever change. Hope and excitement, _life_, and death–she saw the tears in a young noblewoman's eyes as the fire took her, like sap bubbling out from a burning tree. She looked away, and then turned upon Hop Frog a smile Da Vinci would have wept to paint.

"I am truly grateful for your gift to me, Hop Frog. Glad of what you have taken from me, as I would have been to give you…all sorts of things. Indeed, we can never go back from what we have done… didn't you mention more than one regret?"

"Oh, yes. After all my work and plans–the burden of rage on my mind, burning like lead, so that even to sell my soul and ensure the fulfilment of revenge was a glorious mercy–I do regret that I could not accomplish the death of every single venomous parasite within that mansion built on our blood."

Cordelia had gripped Hop Frog's hand as he spoke of his burden–and now let go. He had _listened to her_, before, her brassy, frivolous talk of three in the morning–she had loved him for it, he had worshiped the mere sound of her voice. But now she knew, nothing could stop the words pouring from Hop Frog's thick lips, as his water-glass came down on the table between them, like a guillotine.

"The nobles were such persons as those that obtain the most expensive IC on the open market, then neglect to change a single password from default, but the _Flics_ are no fools even in Nice, and they have deckers. They released the maglocks, the fire was extinguished, a mere eight or ten heirs to the noblest slaughterhouses in Europe were dead–courtesy of the _Docwagon Corporation_, whom my next action of revenge will not fail to disturb! _Super-Platinum contracts_, every one of them. Even after surgery, however, they will bear the scars. Ah-ha-ha, their skin will be rather less than perfect! They will remember the terror! Noble parents will mourn the children they had trusted their future of repression, rapine and evil too, as the poor SINless and metas that they crushed without notice mourned their slaughtered sons and daughters!

"It will not end with one fiery contretemps to ruin a vulgar party, it cannot end…true life indeed, in many respects, is a great deal less simple than pleasant fictions. _Le Bal des Ardents_ was _never_ Hop Frog's last jest. The struggle cannot abate until every secret is exposed, every nation is destroyed, and every dragon, every Megacorp, has been slain! Ah, Trippetta, forgive me! True feeling gives rise to these wild words, and violent actions, and the fear I perceive so clearly expressed in your emerald eyes…I never wished to make you afraid, for there is nothing you should fear! You are the beautiful heroine who rose from the streets to bring fire and justice upon power! I will lay our plots in the shadows, but you will be loved, you will lead, perhaps even a new revolution! It is your right, you justice, it is all I ever wanted, for you–!"

"I'm…not afraid, Edgard. I believe you can truly accomplish everything you wish, and it is a magnificent dream–but I desire nothing further to do with it."

-0-

A silence of half a minute ensued, between the dwarfs who were now both on their feet. The gnome bartender, who'd been feigning the deafness that was just as essential to a first-rate fix as a listening ear, through all previous exchanges…looked up. As a low and harsh noise like steel on steel grated out irresistibly from Hop Frog's teeth.

"Of your own free will," His voice was terribly quiet, "You set that fire to kill as many as a hundred people. We did something beautiful together. You won your freedom, and now do you wish to go back in fear, to slavery? To leave this hideous world in slavery, when we might have saved it together? No, no, no–!"

"Please let me speak, Hop Frog. Please let me tell you what I want."

Her voice was calm and strong; Hop Frog bit his lip bloody. Cordelia filled her lungs like the mystic adept she was.

"It was years ago that I first took a life, when I was an urchin ganger called _Loup Gris_. It was ugly, terrible and necessary–I don't regret it, but I still feel it now. Death, lives ending in terror and agony, can never be beautiful. I remembered that, when I followed you freely, perhaps I hoped it would be different, but _no_; I had to escape, break free, even at the price of horror, guilt, nightmare–those people deserved to die, but I will pay for their deaths as long as I live. I will mourn, I will regret, I pray I will never laugh at killing, or call it other than necessary…I thought when the deed was done you might feel pity, and I might kiss your tears, but you never will descend to pity or regret. You are a great dwarf, Edgard, and I will always think of you with gratitude…but I wish never to set eyes on you again. You will go to your Flux-State, your revolution; I will flee to America, and I do not know what I will do. I'm sorry, Edgard. I suppose you're going to kill _me_, now?"

Edgar Hilsenrath stared at the golden, graceful orphan he had watched through grey, silent years, finally dared to trace through the Matrix to a Paris strip club. Then seen, _with his own eyes_ at last, his lady abused by a darling of the world that he had in consequence set ablaze. His parents hadn't been killed by nobles, their 'entertainments' had never touched him–but a world of pride and dignity had cast out the dwarf, the ugly cripple from his birth. Rejected him.

Now the love of his life was rejecting him too. Because he had brought her pain.

His screams echoed through the catacombs, and the thump of his palms mechanically striking his forehead–for seconds, before Cordelia caught him in her arms like a mother. Dry-eyed, she patiently calmed him.

She finalised their travel orders with the gnome, who had feigned deafness through worse–a ratline through the Netherlands to Berlin for Edgard, and a shadow flight to New York for herself. She'd never asked exactly where Edgard got his all his funds; perhaps that had been what he'd meant by selling his soul.

"I, ah, I, I _always_…" His head bobbed in agony before her, one last time, "…my intentions to you were honourable, and good, I still believe…"

"You were _pure_, my knight. Too pure…" Cordelia wished she was brave enough to kiss him, "I will always remember you…"

"And pity me? A terrorist and a villain, who cannot pity himself?"

Cordelia straightened her back; her smile was wistful, but resolute, but proud.

"Please, take care of yourself, _mon cher_."

Hop Frog bobbed his stooping head once more, turned his back, and limped with his hopping gait out of the wine cellar; into the endless shadows beneath the City of Lights. Cordelia never saw him again or heard anything more of Hop Frog than unsettling rumour.

-0-

With half-a-day before her flight out of the country, Cordelia took the metro back to Belleville. The vilely mildewed flat she'd last left over two weeks ago. As she quietly pushed the door open, her heart was in her mouth. Finally, she let Ki flow down her bare limbs with blood and life. She hopped up to grab the chain on the door and wrenched it off as much with her body weight as her long-buried adept powers.

A wine-stinking, half-wakened snort came from the flat. Cordelia trembled, crossed her little arms over her heaving gorge, and finally stepped over the threshold.

She'd stabbed a man to death when she'd been thirteen; a malodorous white-bearded junkie who might have been scrabbling for her stolen credsticks or the hem of her dress. The old gang had stood her a round of drinks and called her _Arctic_, but she had not wanted to be a murderer. She'd wanted to dance, or wear beautiful clothes, or learn what in the world she wanted to do. Feeling hot blood and urine soak her dress, the dying gasps on her face, Cordelia Gallo had chosen in a place deeper than words to be anything but a murderer. Even a teenage stripper and a beaten woman. She had maintained that choice for six years of lost, unretrievable time, until it was lead on her knife arm, and terror before her eyes.

Alan stumbled out of the bedroom with a Fichetti raised. He had thin blonde hair, and a pale face that had been handsome, but now only exposed the broken veins. He saw it was Cordelia, put the gun down on the table with a grunt, and gestured, come. Cordelia didn't move or let go of her knife.

"Come on. You'd have done that two years ago, if you were going to do it, _ever_. I don't see that anything's changed round here–you stupid stunty! Think you're in some fragging revenge trid? I'm a fragging mage, I'll burn you before you can touch me! Wake the frag up!"

"And forget my dreams, _cher_ Alan? I have none, but I did once…and I will have a life of my own again. I will take no pleasure in this…but I must do it, and I will."

"Oh, this is pathetic. You could've just run, except you couldn't–you killing me would make you a big woman, right, who don't need no man? Pathetic! You know you can't kill me. You're here because you want to give me that knife and get taught your place, again. I won't make it harder than it has to be…"

"Oh, I didn't come here for my freedom, Alan. I won that when I burned half the nobles of France. I'm here for my daughter."

"The abortion…?"

_"She was a girl. YOU MADE ME KILL HER BEFORE SHE EVEN LIVED!"_

Alan snatched at the gun, but Cordelia had leapt up upon the table already, kicking it away. Fire burst from his off-hand. Hot air blasted Cordelia's streaming hair as she twirled away. She hadn't fought with a knife for three years, but she was a mystic adept–and pole dancing demands a surprising degree of strength. It was simple enough to slash through the side of his neck, thump to the ground upon his chest. Stab down over and again, moaning curses, as torrents of blood stained the hem of her skirt.

Perhaps Hop Frog had known about Alan all along; perhaps he had known this was something she had to do herself. She had submitted to the abortion and nothing could change what she had done–but that was the way of the world–of slavery and abuse–to force your consent for absurd, horrendous things you would never, never do. Cordelia Gallo thought of _Le Bal des Ardents_ and smiled through her tears of pain. Now she knew she was an anarchist, with a path of her own and no other. Not a terrorist, not a monster…but her monster had fought for her when she could not fight, and now she would do the same.

_"Merci, merci beacoup…! Mon cher Hop Frog."_


	3. Hop Frog and Trippetta pt2

**Five years later**

**The Seamstress' Union, Redmond, Seattle**

_Drinks for the crowd at the Union_; the message rushed about Touristville's gaudy, dirty streets like an orangutan with its hoop on fire. Few knew whether the hottest new Runner in town–_Grey Wolf_–had geeked the Emerald City Ripper, avenged a legendary Prime Runner for a legendary payday, taken Telestrian industries for every nyuyen–or even saved Seattle from giant magical termites, possibly. For several reasons the Union crowd were quite accustomed, whenever a Runner come back alive in triumph started spreading the creds, to ask not from whence the booze flowed.

It was wonder enough for all who forced their way through the roaring, toasting mob, blinking against the Union's smoke and stagelights, to discover that Grey Wolf was not, in fact, the grizzled veteran street sam her name implied. Nor a wild-eyed shaman, but a petite blonde mystic adept, clad in a black corset and tights. Swinging her exquisite legs about one pole as her true chummer Coyote shimmied down another, like no dancers even the Seamstress' Union had ever seen.

Cordelia Gallo's hair flew out like a golden wheel. Poured down like a banner as she hung by her legs and flung her head back. Bearing her throat and body, dove-white and dove-slim, she spread her arms to the whole of Redmond. She looked as if she had never been so happy to be alive–still alive, in the Shadows.

Coyote's bare brown shoulders shone with moisture in the spotlight. Stripping to her underwear showed as much chrome and muscle as curve; her face was still horribly scared and her eyes rather less alluring than shotgun barrels–but this dance wasn't giving men what they wanted, it was showing the Shadows who they were. Strong and lovely, victoriously unashamed–that was how Cordelia had put it so persuasively, anyway, and this was her night. Coyote gritted her teeth and started spinning–any drekheads who shouted unflattering comparisons got a withering glare and a middle digit. Cherry Bomb and the other Union girls whooped and cheered, for their homegirl who'd endured so much and fought through to more than she'd ever imagined.

"That's my _chica_! My _chica_!" Paco shouted in strangers' faces, tears streaming, "_Te amo_, baby!"

Coyote found a moment between twirls to give him a smile, which made Cordelia laugh. Somersaulting down to the stage, the Frenchwoman piped up with a song from the old country, high and clear enough to rise above the din.

_"We have no bread, we have no cake,_

_We have no tarts, and no macaroons,_

_But we both have wonderful lovers…"_

"WHAT THE FRAG?"

"_FRAGGING WHOOO_?"

…were the general cries. Nothing could've added lustre to the heroine who'd saved Seattle from the Ripper except a love story. Nothing could have raised the pitch of excitement higher still than that but Cordelia's charming refusal to name the fortunate individual. A drunken decker who'd followed Grey Wolf through several Runs bawled out that she'd seen the lady gazing upon her commlink late in the evening, upon a holopic on her commlink, in fact, with eyes full of unshed tears. A heroic, mysterious _and_ tragic love was nothing short of legendary.

All the dwarves present banged their glasses together and quaffed to their sister's glory; even the dwarf fence Van Graas, about as previously inclined to roar or quaff as dance onstage himself, was swept up in the madness. A spirited troll razorgirl had managed to haul Mr Kluwe onto the dancefloor, driving anyone else who wanted a knees up onto the tables. Grubermann the arms dealer was conducting three more orcs in a bass rendition of 'nobody does it better'. Written for Carly Simon when James Bond was still rescuing damsels from nuclear subs, it would always be an absolutely laughable ballad for the laughably drunken chummers of Runners who lived. The crowd might never know just what Grey Wolf and Coyote had done, but they had all outlived a serial killer; if any of them might still wake up dead on the sidewalks of Redmond tomorrow, they still had tonight. Touristville didn't drink to the endless perfection of Nice or Sunset Boulevard; they drank to this brief and floating candle of a night. To all they had; the lust for life. To two steel-hard and beautiful dancing shadowrunners, a sight they did not expect to ever be seen again.

Now Cordelia swept an elegant foot about and bowed to her partner. When knifefighting and magic practise exhausted her, she'd lifted her heart with hours of solitary ballet that she'd never before displayed. Coyote felt more nervous swinging her _nakama's_ tiny golden body about than she ever had while she blasted Aegis into insectoid horrors–but they'd practised a little, and it somehow came off. She threw in a few tango moves, to both Cordelia's surprise and delight, then finally lifted the dwarf girl directly above her head. A cyberarm on her waist, and her partner was surprisingly light for a dwarf who carried so much.

Cordelia Gallo had never wanted to be a killer, a terrorist or a shadowrunner; she had never stopped longing to dance, fall in love and hold her child, lost forever. But 'The moon does rise, the sun does set, you learn to settle for what you get'–the law of the Barrens from Belleville to Redmond, for the SINless little people who only survived by any way they could.

So, she had spied, deceived and killed for nyuyen. Saved BTL addicts from Yakuza and an elvish heiress from bug monsters, maybe even saved the world. You could find _anything_ in the shadows; even the throng of hookers and thugs, street docs and barmaids, grifters, fixers, psychos and dreamers all looking up and applauding her dance like mad. Every precious living aura blazed gold together, in her sight. Mescaline was for losers.

In five years she had lost her way, and never even found a destination. Carried despair through torture rooms and gutter-squats–but she had survived and the Shadows had given her this. She stretched out her little limbs in air like a shining star, and everything she'd endured was worth this.

-0-

"_Never_ doing that again," Coyote growled, after they'd finally retired to her room above the Union, "Still, I said that the last time…"

"Ah. You were also once on the stage?" Cordelia murmured, through happy exhaustion. She plopped down beside Coyote on her bed, as the Hispanic Redmond girl lit up a cigarette. Cordelia gave her a look; Coyote finally sighed and threw away the packet. Just one more. One weak light flickered overhead; the shadowy bedroom was still a tip from Cordelia's ransacking of it for clues, a few weeks ago.

"We do what we've got to do. Stripping, _burger flipping_, stuffing shelves for Stuffershack. Waiting tables, tending bar, geeking dreckheads. Anything to keep kicking, as long as the gutter keeps sucking down–anything to survive. You know the fragging score, chica. Anything but drugs or sex trade. Selling yourself and your life to some bastard fragger ain't living."

"Indeed." Cordelia's eyes were only wistful, "You kept more than your life, _mon brave_. Through all trials, a crusader's strength, my beautiful knight."

"_Get away!_ You're _French_, I get it, but hold the _cheese_!" Cordelia laughed quietly, as smoke from Coyote's ravaged lips dissolved in air, "I did drek back then I'm not proud of. Or had it done to me…I was weak, either way. _We_ did some drek together, both of us. For Gino, for old Sam, saving Seattle or some drek…but I took the path I chose, and I never turned back. Neither did you."

"I could have done nothing without you, my knight. You were born for these Shadows. I could have danced in the Paris Opera, but I lost my way."

"BULLDREK! You saved me from getting tortured the frag to death, you talked my own cousin down when he turned a gun on himself! You led us through Telestrian, the Brotherhood's fragging hive, all the rest. You carried bullets in you! If you really think you just did all that by _accident_, you've either got an ego the size of Paris, or you really are a dumb blonde."

"I think I'd rather be Grey Wolf, lady of the mysteries and Shadows." Cordelia rolled over the bed, then sat up and looked Coyote in the eye. "My only answer is that when lost children cry out in pain, I must help them. Where there is a mystery, the living and the dead lost in darkness, I cannot rest until there is saving light. Even when they never even cry out…I still hear their voices. You are strong, still growing stronger, walking in the way you have found. Howl for me and I will run to you, always."

Her little fingers had slipped between Coyote's chrome. The fire that had propelled the Redmond girl through her bloodied life was quietly submerged in cool sea-green eyes, like a pirate and a mermaid.

"…we both like _guys_, right, chica?"

"Alas, yes. I would have let myself entirely fall for your wonderful boyfriend, but Paco and you are simply _parfaitment_ together."

"…eh, you can take him off my hands for an evening, anytime. You saved my life after all."

Coyote remembered her chiphead cousin clinging to Cordelia's tiny hand and bawling. She could picture drunk old Sam–even his lost sister, if things had been different–weeping onto her hair the same way. Short as Cordelia was, she looked nothing like a child; her eyes held a cool, hard-won wisdom. The world could be snatched from the fire, to roll on for every little _sarariman_ and slummer who simply lived; tomorrow could be better than today. From the corporate towers to the chittering abyss she had known it, and so had her crew.

Coyote knew the reason she, Paco and all of the other Runners and freaks had followed Cordelia Gallo. She always had an answer. She cared for the worst of them. She never left one of her boys and girls behind. Flipping wall to wall onto that troll's neck–a black fireball full of knives that never stopped coming down–even her fury seemed to flow from love.

"Frag…you've only got a couple of years on me. Guess in _street _years, you really are old enough to be my mom."

"Oh, don't let Mrs Kubato hear you say that."

"Ha! Yeah, she's kind of a mom, just harder. Caring that much, sending Runners to dice with death–she'd do anything for us, but we give everything for her. We earn our keep. I'd die for her; less scary than getting her mad again, anyway." Coyote rapped her chrome shoulder, threw her smoke away, "Maybe I could take on her job in a few years, when I'm more iron than flesh, but you never could. Too much heart."

"_Exactement_. Yet what does it take to save the world, as perhaps we did? Fighting skill, courage, some nerve and wits–these are talents and skills only, no more the heart of my character than my knives, my clothes or my body. I do think any righteous Runner, in my place with skills like mine, might have fought through all that a simple dancer and her knight endured to the end. Small or humble as we are, I truly believe there is a hero inside all of us."

"Maybe, but not everyone _is_ the hero of this story, or any story." Coyote persisted, "Cherry, Dresden, Larry who sells knock-off armour; all of them dancing down there in the Union. They've got talents, and dreams, but in the end? They take what life gives them, heads down and mouths shut. They don't want to face what you faced down–so why did you? If it was just saving folks, or making them happy, you could have been a dancer, a nurse, a barkeep...drek, a _housewife_. Not a killer–I know you never liked the killing, but you're still a Runner. Why do it, why throw down with the monsters and megacorps, tiptoe through hell for a half-million payday? Why's the best fragging Runner I ever knew a pint-sized blonde princess?"

Cordelia kept on smiling; she treasured Coyote's envy and rough warmth like few loves she known. With a teasing lift to her chin, she gave the honest answer.

"I suppose it was a boy who got me into this line of work."

"Huh, always the way. Not for me, though."

Cordelia had a moment between replies to think of Hop Frog. She did so nearly every day, and not only because she would never be returning to Europe. She would have heard the noise if her _enfant terrible _had blown the world apart in fire and anarchy, so he was probably either very different now, or very dead. She hoped that he wasn't dead–painfully hard–that her poor boy had grown up straight and proud on his own. No regrets, no doubt she'd had to leave him for the sake of everything she had…but all of that had been from him, in the beginning.

That strange, fiery dwarf with his ugly, clever grin, who'd led her from that prison of compliant abuse and laughed as it burnt to the ground. He'd shown her; even little people could find the truth, bring evil to light, take wicked lives to save good ones. _She_ _could_, in the Shadows beyond the little, safe and horrific world–it was the fire that cast the shadows–and that most likely made her another murderous anarchist, but there were worse things. No going back, thanks to the boy she would always feel something like love for, and that was perfect. The past was fire and terror, three wasted years and her abortion–not the child, now, the _abortion_, and she still hurt. The dark holes that always gaped in her core…but the future was a tiny point of golden love within them, finally ready to burst free…

"Of course," Coyote observed, yawning, "There ain't many jobs out of the Shadows where SINless girls can earn a hundred grand in an evening. Any ideas what to do with the moolah? Start an orphanage?"

"Oh, no, no, no." Cordelia's smile was brilliant, "I mean to retire from shadowrunning, and be a mother to a darling little girl."

"Bulldrek. I mean, leave them hungry, _right_, but you're the hottest Runner in Seattle, right now! Why give that up, for–?"

Cordelia held up a holopic on her commlink. The two-year old toddler, all huge solemn eyes under a heap of golden fluff, was the spitting image. The unshed tears stood explained.

As past-midnight turned to early morning, Cordelia finally told Coyote the tale of a talented little green Runner, freshly arrived in Manhattan, and the dashing, shadowy elf mage whose eye she'd caught and held. The city lights spread out under their feet like jewels, as the rotorcraft at the end of one rope carried them off through the night. Coyote knew the New York Runner's name–he'd allegedly slipped out of a Mitsuhama archology on full lockdown, vanished ahead of a dozen HTR teams like drifting smoke, and also disappeared about a fortnight after Cordelia had told him the news. With a brief note about a golden Run in Kansas City and a credstick tied to a single rose.

"Bastard!"

Cordelia assured Coyote that he'd come back. Then vanished again, over some heatwave, and again. Then come dashing back to save her from a Run gone south, even getting taken by Ares himself to protect her. He'd most likely meant to escape with some saleable paydata, before rewarding himself with a year's hiding out in the Caribbean. Except that Cordelia and her chummers had found him and torn through that blacksite prison in NJ. She'd marched into his cell, grasped his collar to pull his lips down to her own, and told him that his daughter needed a daddy, not a shadowrunner. She been weeping, to see his wounds, and she swore there was love in his eyes–even if there was faintly the look of so many extraction targets heading from one prison to anyone. _Then_ he had stayed, for nearly six months.

"…really, I'm also to blame. I truly love him, but _ma cher_ Victorique is my soul and my life, and he gets terribly jealous. Men can be such boys, you know?"

"Yeah. The ones you keep falling for!"

"_Touché._ In any case, I could not Run the Shadows with Victorique in my arms, and I could not retire or become dependent on her Papa…I would not. It was a terrible choice, but mothers alone in the Shadows help each other. An ork woman who I trust, an ex-Runner with five children of her own, and their father buried in a Renraku-owned landfill…she holds on to _ma petit_ Victorique, back in Brooklyn, for nyuyen. It was the only way–but can you not see sorrow in her eyes, how she misses her real mother? _Ma cher, ma cher, je désolé…!_"

Coyote shook her head, as Cordelia smooched her baby's holopic. She herself had sworn never to birth a child into the cruelty of Redmond. Cordelia was stronger than she'd imagined; she'd watched her tumble over sentry guns and face down invincible bug monsters, but she'd only thought she'd understood.

Maybe all French were just naturally, beautifully crazy. She'd vaguely heard they burnt their nobles to death, banned cyberware and ate snails' legs–was that some kind of gene mod? Drek, she was tired.

"With the payday from this final Run, I can be a mother, at last." Cordelia sank down on the bed, still smiling tearfully at the holopic, "_Une mère_, to my girl, until she is–less small, and wise and good and brave. Her father will have to grow up–if not, Victorique is all I need."

"I believe you. Only…you're a great shadowrunner. You don't like the killing, but you love the rest of it. A full-time mom is that really _you_?"

"I know who I am, _ma cher_. A dwarf, a dancer, a victim. A terrorist, a shadowrunner, a hero. Mother to a lovely little girl…I can be anything I want to be, just like her."

The first laugh passed Coyote's lips that Cordelia had ever heard. Settling exhaustedly into bed beside the dwarf lady, the Redmond girl raised her fist for a goodnight bump. Codelia kissed her knuckles, kissed her scarred cheek and sank happily to sleep, at last, by her side.

-0-

**The Kreuzbasar, Kreuzberg, Berlin**

Even after the bodies and rubble were off the streets, the people of the Kreuzbasar had nothing but survival to celebrate–not even that for Monika, Amsel, Kami, Simmy Kim and the other dead. There was certainly no will to do more than shore up whatever defences they had, and grimly await tomorrow. This was the Flux state; there was no one to take out the drek for you. Everyone had fought back the sudden, senseless attack, everybody had cleaned up the mess, and now all of them stood or huddled or hammered up barricades together.

It was a long night, but morning came–with the faint whisper passing over the Kiez that Monika's crew, the shadowrunners, had gone somewhere and done something it was better to not talk about. Grim resolution took on a shade of hope; life began to go on. Traders set out their goods again, parents comforted their children. Ork work crews from the Cordelia centre went out to repair humans' houses. Beckenbauer wouldn't say who'd proposed the name, or paid for the solid new building, but someone had convinced him that really helping his people meant helping everyone. Anything was possible in the Flux state, even a future.

Glory had already departed in search of Harrow. Blitz had rushed out in a semi-frenetic state, on hearing his lost love Emile had turned up at the Kreuzbasar's gates with a haversack–even Eiger had smiled at that. But the three Runners who remained in the late Paul Amsel's shop-safehouse felt as if they too had little to celebrate but survival–even if it were the world's, perhaps. With only shadows in their discernible future, it was easier for a minute to glance back at a half-conquered trail of ashes and bodies.

"Still can't believe Monika made you leader. Must've been a joke, or that so-crazy-it's-brilliant drek."

Eiger's voice rumbled in her throat like a purring tiger, as the ex-commando sipped a soycaff with a face as sour as the milk. Only Dietrich was on the cold beer.

"Still can't believe he _took_ the job, love," The old Dragonslayer shaman cheerfully commented, "But no one else was going to. Like Monika said…"

"–and as I say, indeed, there are no leaders in the Flux. No leaders in this world, only tyrants and usurpers. No leaders for free people and free shadowrunners, even against tyrants and dragons."

"Too right, boss."

"Whatever you say, fearless leader."

Hop Frog bared his horrible teeth in exasperation. Still, along with many bitter lessons, he had learned to take a joke in the last five years. Dante, Monika's huge part-hellhound, was dozing under his dangling feet–the club foot had been replaced with an off-brand cyberleg long ago. His two sleek black drones 'Ceasare' and 'Mephisto', heavy with the weapons that had dropped so many gangers and hired guns into eternal night, slept quietly on the table behind him.

"Appearance can be deceptive, can it not? Although, there is a tide in the affairs of men–" His low voice ground on, beneath quick, pale eyes, "–and days when the work of years is done. Placed in the _greatly_ exceptional position so savagely _thrust_ upon me, a surprising number of a very different Shadowrunners might have guided such a party as_ this_ _one_ to a happy issue."

"Thanks, Hop Frog. Still don't exactly feel like Siegfried, but–"

"We're not heroes." Eiger grated, "Just fragging good at our jobs."

"Exactly. Both great tales and such vapourings as _Knight-Kings of Lightninghold_–" Eiger winced, while Hop Frog's grin was filled with thought, "–have long spoken of destined heroes and world-shaping deeds. But in this shadowed world, perhaps, events are often greater than the actors. Cities, tribes and conspiring tyrants teach the roles we must play. And ideas, that may change the world or save it…if the world can be saved, only the _will to act_ is absolutely essential."

"Any means necessary. Fragging A." Dietrich raised his beer to Anarchy, "Only way we made the flux state, only fragging way we're ever going to keep it."

"The will to act." Eiger stared down at Hop Frog, seriously even for her, "That's exactly what I didn't think you had; we'd have been dead in a week without that. A headcase full of brains is worth nothing, unless you can act on a cool decision with bullets on three sides and your guts in your boots. And leading means you communicate that to everyone in the team. Monika was a decker and a born leader, _Gott_ rest her, whereas you were–"

_"–a gutless little tech nerd rookie, fresh out of his mama's basement, with the social ability of a VITAS infected drekheap. You could never stand straight and tall on the firing line. You've never led a team, you cannot lead this team, _you did not protect this team–!_"_

"–but looks can be deceiving, my dear Eiger, can they not? I seriously assure you, I relistened to your account of my deficiencies many times. I've found self-improvement such an important thing."

Switching off the recording on his cyberdeck, Hop Frog's eyes and canines twinkled with revenge; he simply wouldn't be Hop Frog without it. Thought he could see in Eiger and Dietrich's stony faces that bringing them alive through a maze of death had given him strictly limited licence to be a drekhead.

"We'd just lost Monika," Eiger folded her arms, glaring, "'Straight and tall' was way to far, but I was angry–it's not a dwarf thing, you're just a weedy, petty little bastard." Hop Frog chose not to argue the point, "As for the rest, I didn't know you did have what it takes, and in the field? That means you didn't."

"A soldier's reasoning, but I understand you. As for myself, discerning the truth of metahuman beings has ever been the study of my life–and it was five years ago that I found I most certainly did have the will to act. To set the world ablaze. My world to ash."

Both shadowrunners felt the weight of words. They knew nothing of five years ago, or their rigger-decker's past, but they heard the old, dry wound still sucking, where someone loved was gone forever. It was common enough in the Shadows–almost shamefully common–except in very exceptional circumstances, the only respect ever paid was silence.

"I scarcely imagined I would ever be anything like a leader," Hop Frog went on, "Almost certainly, and thankfully, I am no leader… but in thought and deed, I have worked my part, for this freely gathered team. I am aware you do not like me, that I am a twisted little bastard, but you have _valued_ me. Since I was born into this body and spirit, I scarcely dreamt of that–through you, I have even discerned something better in myself than I had imagined in years. Through dragonfire and death, I have seen distinctly what manner of persons you are, comrades. Warriors who will never stand down from what they hold as right, from what they have purposed to do–from their _chummers_. What you truly desire, you will certainly accomplish. You need only act."

Hop Frog had whatever the opposite of charisma was but his insight was unmistakable and his sincerity was devastating. Eiger realised that she had just decided to head east, back to the villages her KSK unit had once defended from trafficking monsters. If they'd returned with rape and torture, like that fragger Yuri had told her, she would do anything she had to until they were wiped from the Earth. It wouldn't leave Hop Frog with much of a crew, but that was most likely what he wanted.

"You saved Alexander, and half the Kreuzbasar. That's what fragging counts, boss." Dietrich was insisting, "If you wiped out all those poor fraggers at once with the rockfall, and then that fragging nerve gas, and the _Feurschwinge_, after everything–we're all killers, ain't we? Slayers. Monsters together."

"That psycho rigger, Thorvald Enstad was a monster." Eiger noted, "You're not him, at least."

"…I believe not. Not entirely. At least, when Vauclair held out his wonderous leveller, that virus that might have rid the Earth of gold-bloated, freedom-crushing dragons…! I dashed the cup from my lips, and chose…"

"I think you'd better stop there. We saved Berlin, killed the dragon, roll credits, end of story."

"What's next for us, though…" Dietrich sighed, and finished his beer, "Hey, Hop Frog? What is it you really want, yourself? Dragons or demons or whatever, a guy should have something to fight them for."

"Apart from world rebellion, and the global triumph of anarchy?" With a grin rather shakier than any his teammates had seen before, Hop Frog vaguely scratched Dante behind the ears, "I have considered it, over the past four or five years."

-0-

After _La Bal des Ardents_–long buried beneath a daily cycle of fresh horrors, for everyone but the victims–Edgard had spent a long time in hiding. A tiny flat with a deadbolt, buried in the sprawl of a vast city; he's had seen less sun than a prisoner, and only slightly more than a body in a tomb. He'd already spent most of his life alone with a cyberdeck, though even the matrix was full of hunters for him, now. But once he'd had a world to save, and then he had hurt and lost his Trippetta. What was the world, without a golden sun? What could he do for it, if he had failed her? He'd thought it would take a monster to save a monstrous world, and he could still come to no other conclusion, but she would never accept it. It was true, he was a wretch.

It had been the Schockwellenreiter who'd buried him and dug him up; information still had to be free. His anarchist brothers had bankrolled La Bal des Ardents, hidden him from the nobles' vengeance, and would own him for the rest of his life. Not that he'd minded all those petty datasteals in the Ruhrplex, that had laughably failed to ever change the world; there had been nothing else at the time he'd been driven to do. He _had_ met Monika Schaffer on such a Run; she had been no Trippetta, but bold, clever and another dedicated anarchist. It had taken him years to follow her to the flux, the free city of freedom–the place he had known he must live since he'd been fourteen, that had to be the greatest city on Earth if there was any good or future hope at all.

Now, he'd seen Berlin's freedom, and its failings–but then he'd failed enough himself. He could live with annoying half the Johnson's in Berlin, and the Black Lodge, but his crew might not. The café kids on the big Aztechnology Run were dead because of him. For the destruction of the monstrous Bloodline project that had of course gone to the Schockwellenreiter. With the brainwashing formula, the addresses of families for Humanis donors…information had to be free for metahumanity to be free, he still believed, but the price in lives would be on his head. Furthermore, the megacorps, nobles and dragons still ruled vilely over the world–and he might have changed that.

Egard stared up at a flickering street-lamp in the night, on his way to Café Cezves to hear about Altug's contact, and thought of golden hair. He still thought almost every day of the woman who had inspired him to act the bold, outrageous action, which had bought him to this place. He hardly thought of her every hour now, however, with such a great deal else to think about, and so many people filling his world now as well. That woman taking in washing, that soldierly, crutch-leaning troll–Beckenbauer, actually smiling to see him walk past. This little town of free, humble anarchists had somehow become his town, as if the creature of Frankenstein had stumbled into a village of monsters, or Hop Frog had finally escaped to his far, nameless homeland and absent friends. He had sacrificed a world without dragons for them, in the end.

He'd never tried to pursue Cordelia and was certain now that he never would. It was better she should have nothing to do with a world of darkness, but dance in the light. He hoped for her happiness, and with confidence; he had not fought for her honour because she had been wounded, _never weak_; too strong to ever possibly need his help again.

He was trudging past the corner where Maliit Holyey kept her small but very discerningly stocked tech booth. The dwarf lady herself was arranging a new display of tablets and memory drives, singing along softly to the J-pop on her earbuds. Her glance caught him; her smile among the soft blue glow from screens was very bright.

"Hop Frog! Hi! I closed up early to put the place a bit in order, but do you need anything at all? I mean, that Killjoy program and those ESPs, were they what you needed, to…?"

"Exactly what was required, Miss Holyey, thank you. I mean, ah…_thank you_, for your unflagging, indispensable support."

"Oh, it was nothing at all, nothing next to…I'm just really glad. Thank you for everything, Hop Frog."

Maliit dipped a little bow, with another beautifully easy grin. Her Japanese, human parents had slipped off to Europe before she could get shipped off to Yomi. With her leather jacket and dutifully anarchistic purple mohawk, she couldn't have looked a more different dwarf from Cordelia Gallo. But she knew a DVD from a datachip, and Edgard had thought for months that her fingers with plum-coloured nails danced across touchscreens with care. Like swallows flocking about a far-off, ultimate sunset, or a touch you might imagine in a dream and never forget. _And neither the angels in heaven above, nor the demons down under the sea, shall ever dissever my soul from the soul…!_

But, thankfully, he had never told her a word of that. Indeed, he had learnt some hard lessons in five years; there had been a few past 'Trippettas' in Frankfurt, who he'd said nothing to before her. One fantastical, fire-terminated love story…and the rest was silence…?

"…Miss Holyey, are you feeling better, that is, more settled, perhaps less troubled in your feelings–I mean–how are you? You spoke of the attack on the Kruezbasar…your defence of the Kruezbasar…"

"It was terrible for everybody. I'd killed before, when I was a shadowrunner…but that's all past, now." Another practised shopkeeper's smile, "I'm fine, thanks to you and your team. By the by, have you heard about the functions on that new drone control induction glove from Fuchi? I should have some sample in stock, next week."

"I will be here for it, and to compare corporate work with the bespoke induction controller of certain Russian acquaintance–but I do not believe you are fine, Miss Holyey."

"Oh. Well, I can still smile, can't I? Is that so bad?"

"I didn't mean your smile is false–the very opposite. It–it shines with your joy, your sadness, and your strength of will. Forgive me…"

"No, no, don't worry! The customer is a god, as they say in Japan."

With her pillow lips set and solemn, now, Maliit sat down and held Hop Frog's fixed gaze.

"Strong women–tough dwarves–you barely see anything else in the _trids_, you know?" She began, "We have to be strong to survive, but I almost wish we didn't–it hurts, being strong and hard. It hurts to kill people, anybody, and when I realised, that I _could_ change, I quit the shadows straight off. I like happy music, cute anime and my cat. There's nothing good or pleasant about killing at all, even that man I shot to protect our home. Honestly, nothing makes you fear death like thinking maybe you deserve it for what you did…"

"No. Not a woman who would say that, not a woman like you! I…if you would let me, if give you would give me that honour, I would defend you and this Kiez from any threat! I will. You need not harden your heart, or waste your strength, you are…!"

Hop Frog trailed off in red-hot spluttering. Maliit raised both eyebrows and a corner of her lips.

"Thank you. I mean, most of the customers who try hitting on me go for 'cute', since I'm a dwarf, but it sounds like the word you were looking for was…?"

"…beautiful. _Which_ other customers, pray tell?"

"I have a few besides you! Nearly all guys, since they're deckers…but not one of them quite like you, Hop Frog."

Hop Frog had no idea if he'd been accepted or dismissed as a joke. He considered telling Maliit that when Vauclair had described his mad and glorious plan to rid the world of dragons…_in part_, it had been the thought of the dead kids on Azzie Run who had held him back. Green Winters, the brother Vauclair had killed without intention–unintended consequences of the best and boldest plans. But above all, what had kept him from moving to Vauclair's side over the bodies of his crew was _her_. Maliit Holyey, gentle and lovely, who would have burnt in the Feurschwinge's attack along with the rest of Berlin. Her–and the burning, inexorable drive to bring down revenge upon the ork who had threatened her home. To stamp a cyberfoot down upon Audran's lifeless, hideous face, and laugh, until thick bone cracked underfoot–even Eiger had looked a little disturbed. Yes, it was probably best not to go into detail about what he'd done for her. Truth had to come out, but perhaps not right away.

"M–Miss Holyey. Tomorrow evening, would you care to…join me at Café Cezves? For a coffee?"

He'd felt less terror facing firedrakes, or hordes of gunmen–especially as he'd done all that from behind a drone controller. This was in the flesh, and that was where he stomach-swingeingly felt it.

Maliit…considered the proposition. She'd been around the block, and getting treated like children by all their lives taught most dwarves to look beyond appearances. She'd got out of the shadows to live in peace, but peace could be snatched in an instant when your home was Berlin. The safest place in the Flux State, she felt as she stared into Hop Frog's fervent eyes, was beside this man who longed to devote his being, strongly as she'd seen him pursue decking, rigging or justice, to her safety and happiness.

"Okay. I'll wear something dressy. And you really can call me Maliit, Hop Frog."

"…until tomorrow, then. But please, Miss Maliit–call me Edgard."

-0-

So invested with joy that he could not keep still, Hop Frog plainly told the peculiar white-haired man in the Milanese suit on the subway–the emissary of Altug's mysterious contact–that he would have wiped out every dragon and megacorp in a heartbeat, if it had required the sacrifice of every city except Berlin. Herr Brackhaus left without any offer of work from Saeder Krupp (Hop Frog recognised the name their Johnsons frequently used), but if megacorps came asking anarchists to do their dirty work then they had show free metahumans fitting respect. Brackhaus had certainly seemed less outraged than virtually every other Johnson who'd had any dealing with Hop Frog, and the dwarf himself felt strongly that he would rather live a while than embark on yet another long Shadowrun. In the Kreuzbasar, with Maliit, their home he would defend with all his will and wit.

Hop Frog was thinking of Maliit, and how his love for her could only grow, and whether he shouldn't get something done about his teeth, when the subway train back to the Kreuzbasar suddenly ground to a halt. The dim subway lights went out; footfalls sounded in the darkness with the distinctive assurance of men with guns. Hop Frog kicked open a floor emergency hatch and dropped through, firing adrenaline through his veins from the Schlock's custom injector. Scuttled towards a flickering exit as gunfire blazed behind him.

The Marquis de Blois was always his first suspect, in these cases. From the distinctive hunting cry of 'stump-leg drekstain' it might well be his Human Nation associates. Perhaps the unlamented Volker Stahl's Humanis colleagues, perhaps with a tip off from the Black Lodge, or a dissatisfied Johnson–that thought made Hop Frog grin. If it wasn't the continent spanning power of Europe's nobility and Human Nation bearing down on the Kreuzbasar, all was well. And if was, then a dragon-conquering spirit of anarchy would burn them all again.

As he slid down a ladder and dashed across a mouldering, disused underground station, the footsteps were close behind. He had just enough dim light for a dwarf to see where he was running, but no drones on his person. He still couldn't hit water from a boat with his Fichetti hold-out. What he did have was his drone controller, and a little receiving device he had prepared for just such an occasion as this.

A subway train, that had stood empty and unused since the birth of the Flux State, abruptly smashed through a rotten brick wall of the station. Crashing down like a colossal serpent of steel, it reduced the squad of Humanis assassins in Hop Frog's rear to a chunky, filthy paste.

Hop Frog shielded eyes, nose and mouth from the blast of dust and pulverised brick. Then he looked up, at his work, then he laughed. Laughed like a mad villain who had saved the world because there were no more heroes. With a spin, and a little fist-pumping jig of triumph, he danced up the subway steps. Towards the Kreuzbasar, his comrades, his beloved, and whatever their future held.

-0-

**Seattle.**

After saying all her goodbyes Cordelia had taken a taxi from the Seamstress' Union, to a semi-disused airport where she had booked onto an eastward smuggling flight. She couldn't resist vid-calling little Victorique and her childminder in the taxi, and failed to note another car growling through the gloom behind, far too close. Her child's pure, trusting eyes enthralled her without words. Nothing mattered except that she lived, and grew, and this bond of love grew with her that filled the world even now!

Now, there were two cars behind them. Victorique, in her minder's broad arms, made a big 'O' with her mouth and flapped a tiny hand at a commscreen. Her mother touched her screen back with one gloved finger, and howled out in her heart for joy.

Then the taxi crunched into the third car that had screeched out into its path. A three-way crossfire from smartlinked SMGs tore the cab to pieces. The gunmen kept firing, until a fireball blasted one of their cars end on end.

A mystic adept could leap to the verge out of a car crash and land like a cat. Even cut up by glass–even with her commlink smashed. The glassy red cybereyes of pitiless killing stared back at a four-foot lioness' glare of fury.

_"Sous-merdes!"_

The chromed-out hitsquad–_Night Hunters_, she saw now–fought Cordelia to their death with all they had. Drawing her knives against guns she leapt among them, a small sleek golden missile spinning between bullets. Cyberclaws tore at her dark bodysuit, but she drove knives down with her full weight and leapt away. Or slashed through a thigh and spun to drive her left dagger up through a descending throat. If any foe leapt backwards with inhuman wired speed, getting distance to shoot, she flung a knife. That was a mere bladed distraction; the flamestream wasn't. Mystic adepts were really quite exceptionally deadly.

She soon stood among another scene of burning cars and miserable corpses–too many, and when would the last one fall? As she sadly confirmed that her luckless cab driver was past any help, she tried and failed to think of any other reasons she'd annoyed the Night Hunters. Except that they were metaracists, and street shock troops for Human Nation.

She'd hoped against hope that she'd simply never been linked to_ Les Bal des Ardents_–forgotten by the world, but never by the Marquis de Blois, because they had killed his son. Now she knew what that meant. She felt the old monster's pain in her own little chest, the rage that would never stop hunting her, or her daughter.

Every hit squad behind her for the past five years, she'd feared this. It changed…no, it changed nothing. She had nyuyen, she had chummers, she would go to her baby _now_, and take her anywhere that she could be safe, if it meant burning through the world. It did not matter if she, Cordelia, died in the end–she had lived a very great deal already. And the future would belong her beautiful dwarfish little girl, not men who tormented the weak for amusement without feeling or fear.

There was a plane she had still to catch. Cordelia Gallo ran.


End file.
